Conditional Absolution
by starofoberon
Summary: Post-"Omnivore"- in the "Home Demonstration" universe, Hotch comes to ask Reid for the help that only he can give to deal with Aaron's guilt. Rated for somewhat graphic physical and psychological violence. NO slash. COMPLETE


**A/N:** Action takes place two days after the close of the episode _Omnivore_.

Belongs to the "Home Demonstration" universe, which presumes an ongoing Dom/sub relationship between Spencer Reid and three of his coworkers [Prentiss, Hotchner, and Morgan].

This story contains somewhat graphic physical and psychological violence, but no slash.

**Disclaimer:** The characters are the creation and property of CBS and the _Criminal Minds_ production staff. The complexities of these characters belong to the talented actors who give them life, and to the armies of gifted fan fiction authors who push and redefine their limits on a daily basis.

_~ o ~_

_Mortuus in anima, curam gero cutis_.

[Loosely: "Since I am dead in spirit, I will care about my body."]

~ _Æstuans Interius_, by the Archipoeta of Benedikt-Beuern

**Conditional Absolution**

The savage heart of the storm was upon him.

Thunder and lightning arrived almost simultaneously, They bathed his living room with an explosion of unearthly light and deafening sound that he could feel trembling all the way down his spinal cord. He thought of earthquakes, of monsters, of alien invasions.

He turned off the interior lights and opened his drapes wider. He poured himself a glass of the brandy Rossi had given him for his birthday, and settled comfortably on the couch to watch the spectacle.

Spencer Reid loved everything about storms.

His home phone rang, not his cell. He didn't really want to pick it up, but without even checking Caller ID, he answered.

It was Emily, concerned, but dancing all around the subject. Some stuff you just don't want to verbalize because of the atavistic superstition that it might come true.

Reid wondered what the basis was of that superstition. It seemed pretty universal, so it must be wired-in somewhere, but – why? What earthly good could it bring? What evil could it possibly deter?

"How are you doing?" she asked again, even more feebly, and he knew the question that she wanted to ask but could not. The one he couldn't answer, even if she asked it.

"Fine so far," he said, knowing that they both knew it meant nothing.

_Wow. And we're communicators by trade._

"It's a nice night," he told her as he glanced through the window. "Very _Night on Bald Mountain_."

"My mom calls it Wagnerian," Emily replied. "The Weather Service says there are three separate systems out there heading our way. This is only the first."

_Wagnerian._

He tightened his lips. How had his mom described it? She had specific words for it, but he could no longer remember them. He just recalled how as a toddler he had been petrified by storms. Diana Reid had held him on her lap on their tiny, westerly-oriented back porch and had sung to him, Madonna and child wrapped In Diana's own mother's ancient mink coat, until he learned to enjoy – and finally, to anticipate eagerly – the onset of a storm.

A buzz at the door.

_Crap._

"Somebody's at the door," he told Emily. He didn't sound surprised.

"Oh, dear," she sighed. She didn't sound surprised, either. "Good luck, Spencer."

"Thanks."

He thumbed the cordless handset off, set it on the table, and got up to look through the peep hole.

A rain-soaked Aaron Hotchner stood in the hallway.

A visceral dread twisted at Reid's innards. He had a sick certainty about why Hotch was there; it was not something he even wanted to consider.

One thing he knew about Aaron Hotchner that nobody else knew, not even Haley, was that he, too, had looked forward to thunderstorms when he was a child. Swathed in his blanket, he would perch on his pillow at the head of his bed, with the window wide open and his knees drawn up. He would watch nature's violence while he fantasized revenge on the man who brutalized him and his mother. It was a pact that he had made with the universe: Vengeful thoughts were wrong, but he could entertain them if he only did it while storms raged outside.

Forcing a cordial smile onto his face, he switched on the ceiling light and opened the door to admit the unit chief.

Hotchner refused both brandy and a towel. He seemed dazed and distracted. When invited, he sat down in an armchair, but his body did not relax at all.

_Please, God, I do not want to do this. Let him be here for any other reason than that._

Aaron had not shaved in a couple days. The vertical lines between his brows seemed deeper than ever before. Dark and puffy circles lay below his eyes. It was as though he had aged ten years since the massacre on that Boston bus. It was a new view of him for Spencer.

Reid did not sit down. He did not care to match eye-levels with the unit chief that night. He preferred to stay on his feet, so he could swiftly usher the man back out into the hall, shut the door, and pretend his visit had never happened.

"Are you sure I can't get you a towel?" he asked.

"Reid," Aaron said in a hoarse, awkward voice, "you're the only person who can help me."

_No, I don't think so._

But because he was in fucking puppy-mode, because outside the sphere of their very special relationship he would always be in fucking puppy-mode around Aaron Hotchner, he asked, "How can I help?"

Hotchner scrubbed at his face with both hands. "I need for you to hurt me. There's nobody else I trust. Not even myself."

"Hotch, that's not what I usually do."

_Shouldn't have said "usually;" should have just said "not what I do," but it would have been a lie – and I haven't lied to him yet and I'm not going to start lying now. Not under circumstances like these._

Hotchner nodded miserably. "I know. And I hate to ask you, to trade on our trust, but I'm desperate. I need you to hurt me. Hurt me a lot. No fucking Cape Town weasel words. No permission. Just–"

"Punish you," Reid murmured, and he had never hated the word more. "I understand, Hotch, but–"

No eye contact at all from Hotchner, just a hushed whisper. "Please, I'm begging you, Spencer. I know you can do it. Don't turn me away."

"Let me think about this for a couple minutes."

"Of course." Hotchner bowed his head. His hands twisted together nervously on his lap.

_He's as self-conscious about this as I am. Maybe more so._

_Does that make it any easier? Not really._

"Hotch, this is just – it can't be part of our relationship. I can hook you up with someone else, someone I trust–"

"Why not?"

"Jesus, Hotch, let's start with it's weird and unprofessional and go on from there–"

"And how much weirder and more unprofessional is it to whack me around a little than it is to put me through that psychosexual wringer you've been putting me through, for how many months, now? Neither of us seems to have had any reservations about that one for a long time."

And Reid just stood there, speechless, thinking, _I can't think of anyone, not even the nastiest UNSUBs I've ever met – and I'm including Foyet here – who could possibly hate you as much as you can hate yourself, Aaron._

"Anyone would think you shot those people on the bus yourself, Hotch."

Hotchner looked off into space. "In a way I did."

"Bullshit. Because you didn't immediately cave in to Foyet's proposition?"

Hotch seemed surprised. "Of course not. There's no way I could ever have considered caving in."

Reid brushed his hair back nervously. He felt out of his depth, and he wasn't sure why. "Then – where was the problem?"

"There were plenty of things I could have done to keep the dialog going, at least give the impression that I was open to negotiations, but, no, I had to go right into pride mode." In a frighteningly wicked imitation of his own tones when he was at his most insufferable, he snarled, "'No, I'm the guy who catches guys like you.' It was all about me, Spencer. Just knee-jerk ego, and I cut off any chance I had of getting closer to him, maybe connecting, learning something that could be useful to us – and he's still out there! He's out there right now, free, and killing more people."

"Hotch – Aaron," he corrected himself, since Hotchner had used his first name, "nobody connects with him. Not without making the deal that none of us would ever make with somebody like him. Some_thing_ like him. You don't know that another approach would have made any difference at all."

"That's true," Hotchner whispered, his voice heavy with self-loathing, "but I know that the approach that I did use was _guaranteed_ not to make a positive difference. And I knew it at the time!" He dialed down the intensity. "OK, enough playing 'Profile Aaron Hotchner.' Will you help me?"

"Tell me one more time what you want. Be as explicit as you can be."

Aaron's hands twisted together again. "I need for you to beat the crap out of me," he stammered, his gaze fixed on the floor. "Really. Seriously. As hard as you can. And I need for you to tie me down and gag me so I can't possibly stop it."

"Hotch – I just – there are no words to describe how much I do not want to do that."

Never before had Hotchner trained the full fury he was capable of at Reid himself. It was daunting as all hell. "God damn it, Reid," he snapped, his voice ice and steel, "I've given you complete power over me. Ceded you power. However you want to phrase it. With great power comes great responsibility."

"And you're fucking quoting fucking _Spiderman_ at me!" Spencer shouted back, because he didn't have much of an icy snap in his vocal repertoire at the moment.

"And you have _always_ assured me that the submissive is ultimately the one in control."

_God. No real answer to that one._

He stood motionless for two minutes, waiting for Hotchner to say or do something else. Something else Reid could use to deflect the discussion in another direction. He didn't. He simply sat there and glared steadily at the young man who in that other world was his subordinate. He radiated terrifying power and self-control.

_And that's what the monster inside him looks like, the one that pursues him so relentlessly. Maybe it terrifies him, too._

"All right," Reid sighed at last. "I'll go get my stuff. You–" He gave Hotch a reassuring thump on the shoulder as he passed. "–Everything above the waist comes off."

Without a second's hesitation, Hotchner rose to his feet and began to remove his suit jacket.

Reid sighed again, closed the drapes, and retreated to the drawer where he kept his Dom tools of the trade. He was experienced at what the chief was requesting, although he would have preferred to keep their relationship where it had been, sweet and sexy and intense.

_Fucking crazy role-reversal we've got going here, like some kind of sick joke._

When he returned to the living room, Hotch was down to his undershirt. He took it off, folded it neatly, and piled it with his other clothing on the armchair by the window.

The lightning had moved off into the distance. The thunder trailed far after it, its voice a mere shadow of its previous might.

Reid removed the center back cushion to the five-cushion couch, revealing a heavy metal grillwork.

"A couple things," he said in a weary voice. "This is going to hurt like hell, Hotch, and it'll take a long time. This is no quickie experiment. It'll continue to hurt like hell for a couple days, maybe more. If I do it carefully, there won't be scarring, but I can't over-emphasize that this is serious abuse. This will leave marks for a long time. Even clothing will cause substantial pain. Are you sure that this is what you want? Because once I start – _listen to me very carefully on this, Hotchner_ - I'm committed to ignoring you until I'm finished."

Hotch looked at him and gnawed his lower lip. "I understand," he whispered unevenly. "And this is what I want." His gaze shifted down again. His hands twitched at his sides. He seemed drained, exhausted.

Reid settled himself on the nearest cushion to the left of center and spread two thick towels over the center cushion. "OK, then, Aaron," he said, deliberately using the chief's first name. "Down on the floor and give me your hands." Hotch knelt silently. He may have wanted and needed this punishment, but the fine sheen of sweat on his face and torso indicated that it also frightened him.

"I'm using soft cuffs so your wrists won't get visibly marked much," Reid said, "in case you're thick-headed enough to decide to go in to work." He snapped a loop onto each wrist, estimated the distance he would need, and clipped them close to the top of the grillwork.

"Now, another explanation. I refuse to use a regular gag. If your nose gets congested, or you vomit, a gag will put you at serious risk. What I have instead is this." He showed Hotch the small device with its wire and its tiny teeth. It looked like a fat little green plastic boomerang. "It looks stupid, but it keeps your tongue depressed so you can't actually say anything useful, but allows you to swallow and breathe and spit – and scream, for that matter. It still isn't any fun, but I won't have to worry about you choking or aspirating anything. Do you understand me?"

"Yes."

He tapped alongside Hotchner's temporomandibular joint. "Open up." Again, his eyes dark with both hunger and fear, Hotch submitted, as solemnly as a churchgoer accepting communion. Reid locked it into place.

Reid bent over and murmured, "Straighten up." When Hotch obeyed, Reid wrapped a belt around Hotchner's legs just above the knee, firmly securing them to the center leg of his custom couch. Hotch bit his lip, his gaze fixed on the dark burgundy swirls of the bath towels.

"And this," Spencer continued, holding out a thick, fleece-lined suede hood, "is to keep any screaming that you do down to a manageable level – and I guarantee that you will scream, Aaron." He grasped Hotchner's jaw and raised his face. "Look at me, Aaron, please. Look me right in the eye. Do you really understand me about this? This is serious shit. I'll give you one last chance: Are you absolutely positive you still want to go through with it?"

Hotchner's eyes glistened, but he set his jaw, squared his shoulders, and nodded once, firmly.

_Fucking stubborn bastard._

"Whatever," Reid sighed. He found himself smoothing back Hotchner's hair. "Aaron, Aaron," he breathed, "I don't want to do this, but if you're sure it's your only road back to peace of mind, I can't refuse you." He bent and kissed Hotchner's temple once – Jesus, that was a weird sensation! – and slipped the hood over his head.

Reid spent several minutes just sitting beside him, fondling his arms, his shoulders, his back, scraping them gently with his nails, building the tension level as high as he could before the beating commenced. He preferred that as much punishment as possible be psychological, especially since it was only Hotchner's ferocious, inappropriate sense of guilt and shame that had brought him here, down on his knees in Reid's living room.

Then he lowered the grill work on the back of the couch. It jerked Hotch's arms forward, stretching his back muscles to their limits. Reid needed to make the tangentials as unpleasant as possible if he wanted o keep a limit on actual damage done. He rose to his feet and unrolled the flannel that held his switches. He took a long time running the cold, whippy wood over the exposed back before him, letting it swish audibly and perceptibly on the cushions, each time making Hotch flinch and utter tiny groans of dread.

Only then did he bring the switch down hard the first time across Hotch's shoulders. There were several long seconds of complete silence. The pain had slammed the breath out of his body; he could do nothing, not even scream, until he was again able to inhale.

Spencer reverted to psychological torture, running the switch, or alternatively his finger or his fingernail, over that first welt, pressing as though aiming at various sections of the presented back. He would tap with increasing vigor at an area of Hotchner's back, then bring the switch whistling through the air and miss. After three genuine lashes and a couple dozen false alarms, Hotchner quivered constantly and clutched at the grillwork so hard his knuckles were white. His moans were audible through the hood and his body was awash with perspiration.

_Rules for using a switch, as amended this night by Spencer Reid, PhD: Keep the welts at least an inch apart, more, if possible. Avoid at all costs two welts crossing. And don't cry; it will only spoil your aim._

Twenty-three minutes later, Reid swiped at his eyes one last time. He blew his nose and took several long slow steadying breaths, trying not to look at the eleven angry purple welts that scored the chief's back from the nape of his neck down to his waist. Three of them had broken the skin. One of the three oozed blood. Reid had allowed his emotions to make him sloppy. Looking at the proof of it made him burn with embarrassment and regret.

He walked around the couch and lifted the grillwork. He unclipped Hotchner's hands from the grill, pulled off the cloth cuffs, and rubbed the raw skin of his wrists.

Hotchner stirred slightly. Leaning over the back of the couch, Reid gently tugged the hood off. His face was swollen; his eyes were puffy and red-rimmed from his tears.

"Aaron," Reid whispered. "Oh, God, Aaron." He touched Hotch's lips. "Open up, Aaron, let me-" He slid the tongue depressor device from Hotch's mouth and stuck it in his pocket, then he scooted back around the couch. He released the belt around Hotchner's legs.

Slowly, sluggishly, Hotch struggled up to lean on his forearms, his head drooping. His breath was heavy and ragged, with a hint of a moan in it. He neither spoke nor looked up at Spencer.

_He'll hate me forever the way he hates himself. Oh, god, oh god ..._

Reid sat down again on the near left cushion. "Aaron," he groaned again, tentatively stroking Hotch's hair. "I'm so sorry – I told you it would be bad."

Hotch bumped his face against Reid's hands softly. "No, it's fine," he rasped through a bone-dry throat. He groped for Reid's right hand and pressed it to his own cheek. "You did what I asked you to do. It's just taking me a while to, to pull myself together."

Reid slipped to the floor beside him, fighting renewed tears. "I didn't want to hurt you, Hotch."

"I know. But you did, and I thank you for that."

"Let me get you something for that. I have some–"

"Leave it," Hotch told him. "I'll take care of it when I get home."

This time, Reid didn't even think about initiating a glare-down with the unit chief. "OK, whatever," he sighed.

A few minutes later, his Dom tools were back in the drawer of the buffet. Hotchner stood before him in his tee and his unbuttoned shirt, his face pale and damp. "Thank you," he whispered. "I know that was a terrible thing to ask, and I promise that someday I'll make it up to you."

"Shh," Reid whispered back. He touched Hotch's upper arms, and Aaron flinched and hissed. "Sorry," Reid gasped. He could think of no safe place to touch him but below the waist. He placed his hands gently on Hotchner's hips, hoping the chief would understand that he meant nothing inappropriate by the gesture, and apparently he did.

Hotch carefully raised his arms and laid his hands on Reid's shoulders, one on either side of his neck, then he inclined his head and rested his brow against Spencer's.

Reid felt a profound rush of an intimacy beyond sexuality, as though he were standing in quiet understanding with the tough, fearless elder brother he had longed for and fantasized about as a scrawny and terrified child prodigy. He knew that Hotch was in pain, and that the main reason he was still standing there was to collect the courage to move again, but Reid didn't care. He didn't want the moment to end.

So, of course, since his truest genius lay in fucking up his adult emotional relationships, he put his foot in it. "When I was – when I was working on you," he said, "I really felt like I hated you." Instantly he wished that he could suck the words right back down his throat, but they just hung there between them at chest level, like an evil cloud. He hung his head miserably.

Hotchner shifted his left hand. His left thumb slid under Reid's chin and raised it so they were eye-to-eye. "We do whatever we think is necessary to get through," he sighed. "I wasn't all that crazy about you, either." The cloud of evil dissipated. Abruptly, Hotchner hugged him, one arm around his neck, the other around his waist, with the same fierce strength he had used in Georgia, when the team had rescued Reid from Tobias Hankel's demons. It lasted no more than three or four seconds, but it warmed Spencer head to toe, like a bath in the sweetest hot chocolate.

Hotch straightened and backed away two steps. He began fastening the buttons on his dress shirt. "Any chance you can help me into my jacket?" he asked in what sounded almost like a perfectly normal voice.

"You're really going to put that thing on?" Reid asked, but even before the question he was crossing to the armchair to collect Hotchner's damp suit coat.

_No matter what else goes on between us, all other things being equal, I seem wired to obey him. _

"It's chilly out there," Hotch replied. He turned slightly to unzip, to tuck in his shirt and adjust his fly and belt.

That little turn, that automatic modesty even after all they had experienced together, probably defined Aaron as well as anything could.

"And it's a matter of habit," he added as he slipped his tie under his collar. His face still looked drained and drawn, and a fine sheen still shone on his brow and upper lip. His fingers could have been steadier as he knotted his tie, but he was keeping it together far better than Reid had imagined anyone could.

When he had the knot perfectly centered and his cuffs buttoned, Hotchner looked directly at Reid. "Again, I have to thank you," he said quietly, his expression grave. "There's no one else in the world I could possibly have trusted to help me tonight. I'm forever in your debt." Then he visibly gathered his strength and turned so Reid could help ease him into his suit coat.

_I have the toughest big brother on the block_, Reid thought, and the notion made him smile self-consciously. When they had wrestled the jacket on, Spencer adjusted it so the shirt and coat collars lay right, and the top welt was completely hidden from view. He found himself timidly smoothing Hotch's hair, and again, the sensation was like that of a kid brother: _I want to grow up to be just like him_. Then the adult in him added, _But without all the psychological crap he's hauling around. _

And then_: I have enough of my own._

"So, how are you feeling now?" Reid asked. "No lies."

Hotchner actually got part of the word _fine_ out before he stopped himself. He bit his lip, studied the carpet, then looked at Reid and managed a weak grin. "I've been better."

"Are you sure you won't have something? Brandy? Coffee?"

"Thanks, but I'm good."

Reid found himself unable to give up. "Can I drive you home?"

"I took a cab. I'll take one home, too, but thanks for the offer."

"And what if the cabbie–"

Hotch sighed. "I'll tell him I have a bad back."

Although it was only a few feet, Reid walked him to the door and opened it. "Hotch?"

"Yes?"

"How do you feel now about – about your decision to come here tonight?"

Those dark eyes speared his. "It was the right thing to do. I have no regrets."

And he was gone.

Spencer Reid closed the door and leaned heavily against it.

_And so it goes  
Till the day you die_

He finished off the birthday brandy and popped the cork on a bottle of Champagne that he would probably never drink otherwise.

_it's gonna make you cry_

He turned the lights off, re-opened the drapes so he could watch the next thunderstorm roll in from the southwest, switched on the sound system and put J. Geils Band on infinite repeat:

_I've had the blues  
The reds and the pinks  
One thing's for sure –  
Love stinks!_

_End_

_Hoping for reviews!_


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